Automation Feast or Famine

Now that we’ve gotten that whole new iPhone analysis thing out of the way, let’s get back to the smart stuff.

The Wall Street Journal CIO Journal’s “Morning Download” email has been a must read for me for a couple of years now, and they do a generally good job of keeping their fingers on the pulse of enterprise IT, software, etc.

In today’s edition, they cited a new report from the World Economic Forum report on the jobs impact of artificial intelligence between now and 2022.

The report suggested that 984,000 jobs would disappear, but that 1.74 million new jobs would be created.

The survey was of chief HR officers and top strategy execs from 300 global companies.

Almost 40 percent of respondents indicated they expect to expand their workforce by 2022, but more than a quarter expect automation to create new roles in their companies.

More than 50 percent of employees of larger companies will need to invest in significant training for their employees to remain relevant, and nearly 50 percent of respondents said they expect their full-time workforce to shrink by 2022 as a result of automation.

In terms of cadence, 29 percent of current workplace tasks will be completed by machines in 2018, 42 percent in 2022, and more than half — 52 percent — by 2025.

I guess the large and lingering question is, which half of which tasks?